For Lack of a Better World

By day three I didn’t even want to leave this place. I found myself in the state of deep rest. I found myself in a state of ecstasy. I was entertaining the thought of staying here forever. Of course, I had no idea what that meant, but my heart was on fire and I would’ve been content to let that flame burn here indefinitely. I had found heaven,

When people fetishize heaven, they really do it a disservice. Pearly gates? Streets of gold? Mansions? I guess. But I would be far more impressed to show up in the afterlife to a place like this; a peaceful, lush valley encompassed my sheer mountains, waterfalls spilling on to the valley floor and into a long, meandering river, a warm sun during the day and a billion stars at night. Yosemite was heaven on earth for me.

But it wasn’t just the nature or the atmosphere or the environment that made me so happy. It was what was happening to my mental health as well. Day by day I felt freer. I felt liberated. I felt unrestricted. I was sleeping when I wanted. I was walking as much as I wanted. I was eating when I felt like it. I wasn’t adhering to anything that resembled a typical pattern. Not by much anyway. I had no agenda to hold myself or points of interest that I was looking for. I could’ve very well been the only person in this valley and seeing it all for the first time.

On top of that, I felt relieved from my ego. I wasn’t my name or my age. I wasn’t of any ethnic or cultural designation. I wasn’t associated with a home state. I had no religious, political, or philosophical affiliation. I wasn’t a son or a brother or a friend or a guardian or a significant other. In fact I might’ve felt as untethered to myself as I had ever felt. Sure, ‘I’ was enjoying this experience. But who was ‘I’ anymore? I was part of the scenery now, a shifting of material moving to and fro amongst the rest of the material along with Luna, another concentration of matter sharing the experience with me, no more or less a part of the landscape than the landscape that surrounded us, a temporary expression of the valley herself, a member of it, drawn here for a time like the snowfall or the trees or the animals that had come before us.

The relief I received from the weight of being was more than I could have asked for. I came to see a park but I stumbled into a sanctuary of solitude, a refuge to retire away from the rancor of society, safe from the obligations of civilization, protected from the oppressiveness an industrial world. This was a haven of stillness and quiet and calm. And I would drink in as much of that stillness, quiet, and calm as I could as long as I was able to be here.